Linux

Most Unix systems no longer store the passwords in the password file; it is stored in a private file called /etc/shadow, only accessible by the root account. The passwords are stored in encrypted form in that file.

Linux has broad support for a wide range of devices and platforms, so there is no single computer that is "best" suited overall. Generally speaking, any motherboard will "work;" ones with Intel processors and chipsets will probably offer the best performance and stability. Intel graphics cards should work out of the box on any distribution; NVIDIA makes excellent (though proprietary) drivers for their cards. It is probably best to avoid ATI cards and graphics. Virtually all Ethernet adapters work; wireless cards from Intel and Linksys usually have drivers available.

scp plum:.bashrc .bashrc

Some advantages Windows has is its more familiar to people and thus considered the mos "user friendly." Its monopoly on the desktop tends to mean that just about any tech support professionals will be most familiar with it. If you're a gamer its got the best and the most PC games made by professionals.

Disadvantages: It's slow, bloated, inefficient, has poor memory management, very insecure, tends to be unstable. It is proprietary, meaning only Microsoft can actually improve it in the ways that matter, and they've demonstrated no interest in doing so for the longest time. It is also not very flexible and scalable at all. Because of this, its a poor choice for most applications, even on the desktop, but its support for things such as servers, mobile, and embedded are a nightmare. It's nonexistent on supercomputers or robotics, and on extremely mission-critical applications, it is frequently passed over for Linux. Things such as the military, stock market, and healthcare industry especially make a policy of avoiding Windows on anything crucial to their operations and tend to use Linux instead due to Windows being unreliable at the best of times. It is also the most expensive operating system in the market by far.

Linux Advantages: It's the third most common operating system in the world, and it is also the fastest growing. This makes it familiar to a growing amount of people. Linux actually has the widest hardware, software, platform, and tech support base of any operating system in computer science history, and can even be installed on things many people would never consider: Xbox, Wii, PS3, Palm Pilots, even Microwave ovens and toasters! Its two top desktop environments (GNOME and KDE) are actually what make Linux better in a lot of ways than Windows on the desktop. Not the least of which is giving the user far more choice and flexibility while still retaining "user friendliness." Out of the box, it supports far more hardware than Windows does out of the box. Outside of the desktop, Linux is very strong and very dominant, especially in the server, embedded, and supercomputer markets, a testament to its security and power. Speaking of which, it is the exact opposite of Windows when it comes to size, efficiency, security, and reliability. In another 5-10 years, Linux will probably have the absolute best hardware support in every category as hardware manufacturers learn that they can support Linux for next to no cost in just a few ways: 1. They can just release specs and let the open source community make their drivers for them, which won't actually cost them a dime. 2. They can hire just a couple developers for open source drivers, and still have a massive developer base around their driver as the rest f the community pitches in. 3. They can just leave it well enough alone and allow the Linux developers reverse engineer the hardware. This is not the best way for Linx developers as its a decidedly uncooperative approach taken by many hardware manufacturers. 4. They can just make a small department dedicated full-time to Linux drivers, usually binary blobs. This is nVidia's approach. Sometimes proprietary drivers support hardware very well in Linux, sometimes not. You will get tech support from a much more helpful and reliable place: The entire Linux community. Almost all the Linux distributions are free of charge, and those that are commercialized never cost more than $50. And their commercial tech support, whenever you can actually have it, is usually far more effective and helpful than the typical commercial Windows tech support. Also, if you runa business, a Linux-based infrastructure is the best. It's, reliable, secure, and if you have the money, you have IBM in your corner giving you the best business infrastructure support and consulting money can buy.

Linux Disadvantages: It is not a strong gaming environment. Not for a lack of technology, but just a lack of general developer interest. Also, though it has a lot more support for hardware than Windows, often (But not usually) the individual support for hardware can be missing parts. This can't really be blamed on Linux but, again, a lack of manufacturer interest in the platform. It wasn't until about 5 years ago anyone took Linux seriously as a desktop option (It always has been a strong, preferred server option, however.). Currently some hardware manufacturers completely ignore Linux even after it has proven desktop viable. This typically won't stop drivers from coming around, but it means that the driver might take a long time as the developers are forced to reverse engineer the hardware. Due to Windows monopoly and desktop PCs almost always being designed around Windows, you're not likely to get anything useful from tech support if you use Linux. This isn't too big a disadvantage as most professional tech support actually does operate on a corporate agenda and will try to enforce a status quo on you.

If you ask my opinion, unless you want to game hard on this machine, go Linux exclusively, there's nothing Windows will offer you that Linux doesn't provide better cheaper(If not entirely free.). If you plan to do anything else, Linux is the best option. Servers love it, so do supercomputers. And now, with Android, cell phones use it, too.

Have you tried simply loading windows XP. Windows XP also formats your hard drive for you. If you have any data you want to keep make sure and back it up cause Windows XP will erase everything.

I don't think you can.

Here is what is compatible with putting Linux into you're iPod....

(What I'm trying to say is that this is the versions that can do the project and which can't)

1st Generation iPod - WORKS

2nd Generation iPod - WORKS

3rd Generation iPod - WORKS

1st Generation iPod nano - WORKS

2nd Generation iPod nano - DOESN'T

5th Generation iPod (Video) - COMES WITH BUGS

Note this: 1st-3rd Generation iPods are the type YOU want to use for thus operation.

Linux itself makes no profit, it's an operating system. Further, no one company or individual develops it.

As for how companies who develop for Linux make profit: It's often through support contracts and services. Also, nothing in the GPL stops Linux from being sold by anyone.

"Older computers" can encompass a wide range of hardware going back nearly 20 years. To simplify the variables, I'll give some example configurations, along with some appropriate Linux distros you may like to try.

Pentium 4 2.8 GHz

1 GB DDR RAM

60 GB IDE hard drive

This is within the spec of pretty much every Linux distro. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, OpenSUSE, PCLinuxOS, and Debian are all good choices for a computer like this. If you demand an extremely responsive desktop, try Xubuntu, Debian with an Xfce desktop, or Dreamlinux.

Pentium III 1 GHz

256 MB PC133 RAM

20 GB hard drive

Things start to get a little tighter here. More RAM on such a system would improve performance immensely. On a Pentium III, an Xfce desktop (as found in Xubuntu or Dreamlinux) is ideal. Puppy Linux (with JWM) would also run well.

Pentium II 400 MHz

128 MB PC66 RAM

10 GB hard drive

While Xubuntu and Dreamlinux will still run decently, they no longer exude a large amount of speed. Puppy Linux should still be good. Debian does not provide a JWM CD by default, but it can be installed from the netinstall version from the command line. Damn Small Linux, based on an older version of a Knoppix LiveCD, begins to look attractive.

Pentium MMX 233 MHz

32 MB of DIMM modules RAM

4 GB hard drive

From this point on, Linux becomes a little more "down to basics." Desktops are still available, but they lack as much "user-friendliness" as many distros aimed at newer computers have created. Damn Small Linux is one of the best choices for a desktop system. Puppy Linux is no longer usable, as it requires 128 MB to boot a LiveCD. A Slackware install with a JWM or Fluxbox desktop is a decent choice. Xubuntu is still technically bootable, but will take so long to boot as to be useless. Debian is still possible, as long as you know how to use the command line to install a desktop.

Intel 486DX-66 MHz

16 MB of RAM

1 GB hard drive

This is likely the end of the line for most users. Beyond this point lies only ancient console-only distros, kernel recompiling, alternative C libraries, and FPU emulation. Only the brave, daring, and masochistic dare tread this path. These requirements are the bare minimum for Damn Small Linux, the most minimalistic Linux desktop still developed. You could skimp slightly on the processor (say a 486DX-40) and hard drive (Damn Small Linux needs only 50 MB) but the X server will probably not run under less RAM.

Intel 386SX-33 MHz

4 MB of RAM

40 MB hard drive

Linus Torvalds began the Linux kernel on a machine similar to the above. In the ye olden days, a 386 with 8 MB of RAM was enough to run a state-of-the-art web server (and a crude X server). Today, you'd be hard pressed to even fit the kernel into such a small amount of memory. Honestly, you'd probably get more of the functionality you want on such a machine from FreeDOS than an ancient Linux kernel.

The 2.6 Linux kernel supports up to 4,294,967,296 user IDs. The 2.4 kernel only supports 65,536.

In the normal sense of a "file"system, swap is not formatted as a file system.

It is formatted similar to memory or RAM.

No. Linux, Unix, Windows, and Mac OS, OpenVMS, Z/os, IBM i are all examples of operating systems.

Operating system software is what you see when you turn on your computer and wait for the computer to go through its Initial Program Loading (IPL) process reading software from a designated device, and going through the process of setting things up so it can process user requests.

Application software would be a programs that are used to perform tasks and jobs requested by a user. Sometimes these do turn themselves on at startup automatically - like antivirus software.

tar is one of the basic commands in Unix. tar command in unix is used for achriving purpose, you can create archive, update or extract from archieve using tar command in unix.you can also create compressed archieve by combining bzip2 and gzip along with unix tar command

Absolutely. Very widely used.

Actually, this very site runs on Linux...

Linux has a large and healthy variety of web browsers. Mozilla Firefox is equally popular on the Linux desktop. Opera also has a decent following on Linux. Konqueror, which uses a rendering engine similar to Safari and Google Chrome, also has some usage.

There are lots of smaller web browsers, such as Dillo, Lynx, or Arachne, that are sometimes used in less powerful computers.

There are many different utilities - everything from vi, vim, nano, pico, emacs, etc. Each can be different depending on the power of what they do to the ease of use (beginners vs power users).

The accronym "GNU" stands for Gnu Is not Unix.

Technically speaking, it's "GNU/Linux" because Linux is the kernel, not the whole thing, we just shorten it to Linux (I do this myself, but I do know that Linux is just the kernel).

It is made up of the Linux kernel and several GNU programs (try typing a basic command into a terminal with --help, chances are you could easily find one that says GNU somewhere at the bottom).

the cp command would copy "do" over "done"

if this isn't the behavior you want, you can do "cp -n" to not overwrite if "done" exists, or "cp -i" to prompt you whether you want to overwrite or not.

most people use their last names, pets, favorite food, etc. but it is not reccommended to do this because its easier for people to get in your computer and access your files.

To understand what makes Linux relatively more stable than, say, Windows, you must understand what makes Windows unstable in the first place.

1. Drivers. Most of the blue screens seen in Windows 2000 and newer are the result of poorly written drivers. Microsoft does not make the drivers for the hardware on computers; the manufacturers of the hardware do. By contrast, the drivers for hardware in Linux are developed by the authors of the kernel. They can check the code themselves to be sure that it works properly.

2. Separation of processes. When "Windows Explorer crashes, when browsing a folder for instance, not only will the folder disappear, so will the taskbar and Start Menu. The same process, Explorer.exe, controls both the folders and the taskbar. Traditionally, it also controlled Internet Explorer. On Linux desktops, different programs control the file manager, the web browser, and the taskbar. One crashing will not affect the others, so you can continue to work productively with little interruption.

3. User privileges. In Windows XP and older, the default user was automatically made an "Administrator." This allows the user complete control of the system, but also allows any programs he launches to do whatever they want. This is how spyware takes over the system. In a Linux system, a user is encouraged (and in "newbie" distros, forced) to use an account with more limited privileges. This account cannot install software, or make any changes to files that he doesn't own. When the user wants to make a change to the system, he just needs to enter a password, to assume maximum privileges. This lowers the likelihood of installing software without the user's knowledge.

Linux actually has the largest share of the web server market, so you're probably not wondering about it's popularity in that regard.

Many people point to different issues with desktop Linux, and think that once this barrier is overcome, it will become the "year of the Linux desktop." However, it is likely a combination of these factors that slow the growth of Linux in this area.

The first reason is that in order to take a significant market share, you have to market. When was the last time you saw a commercial on TV, telling you to get a computer with Ubuntu on it, instead of a Mac or a PC with Windows? If no one hears about it, they aren't going to be interested in trying it.

The second reason is the (perceived) complexity that people like to portray Linux as having. Not to be cruel, but a large number of internet users one will come across will communicate on a third-grade level. They don't understand relatively simple computer terms like "partitioning", "formatting", or "open-source." They want to know why they can't play RuneScape out of the box, or play MP3 files, or DVDs.

The third reason is probably the fact that they first have to deal with an operating system already being dominant. Many manufacturers don't provide any sort of drivers for Linux, or supply specifications so that others can write them. Many software companies that make popular products don't make a Linux version. Many computer retailers are locked into licensing agreements with Microsoft, so that they effectively can't sell a computer without bundling the cost of Windows with it. Not many people are going to be interested in Linux if it costs them exactly the same as Windows, but can't run half of its programs.

"/" is the root directory in Linux. Make sure not to confuse this with the "/root" directory, which is the home directory for the user "root" (similar to "Administrator" on Windows)

sudo is a Linux command used to execute programs as the root, or "super user." sudo is a shortening of "super user do." One uses sudo when they need to run a command or program as root, but do not wish to log out or switch their entire shell to root privileges (like they could do with the su command). The file sudoers defines per user or per group what commands can be run with sudo. This file is edited with the command visudoers